Citigroup $81 trillion Banking Error, mistakenly credited a client’s account.

Citigroup $81 trillion Banking Error 

In a “bad moment,” Citigroup inadvertently froze a customer’s account with $81 trillion in cash. The US bank is working to resolve the Citigroup $81 trillion banking error. It is also addressing regulatory concerns over its risk management processes.

Citigroup made $81T mistake

Citigroup made a major mistake. The bank mistakenly deposited $81 trillion into a client’s account. It was supposed to transfer only $280. This error could make it difficult for Citigroup to convince regulators. The bank has been trying to resolve long-standing operational problems.

Neither the payments employee assigned to verify the transaction at the start of business the next day nor another official noticed the incorrect internal transfer, which took place in April of last year and had not previously been reported.

Ninety minutes after the payment was posted, a third employee noticed a problem with the bank’s account balance. The payment was reversed a few hours later, according to an internal version of the incident that was familiar with the situation and obtained by the Financial Times.

Another person familiar with the situation said Citi did not lose any money and reported the “near miss” to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve.

The bank said the procedures “would have stopped any money leaving the bank” and that its “intelligent controls immediately identified the input error in two of Citi’s ledger accounts, and we reversed the entry.”

No impact to Citibank

“While there was no impact to the bank or our clients, this episode highlights our ongoing efforts to continue to eliminate manual processes and automated controls,” the statement said.

According to internal analysis reviewed by the USCA, Citi had ten near misses of $1 billion or more last year. A near miss is an incident in which a bank processes an incorrect amount but ultimately recovers the funds. Last year, the number was slightly lower at 13. Citi chose not to comment on these major incidents.

There is no comprehensive public data on the frequency of near misses in the industry because they are not required to be reported to regulators. According to several former bank risk managers and regulators, near misses of more than $1 billion were unusual in the US banking sector.

A series of close calls with Citi show how the Wall Street bank has struggled to resolve its operating problems over the past five years, after it transferred $900 million to creditors embroiled in a tense dispute over cosmetics company Revlon’s debt.

CitiBank CEO Jane Fraser

Since Jane Fraser became Citi’s top executive in 2021, addressing regulatory issues has been a “top priority.”

However, the Federal Reserve and the OCC fined Citi $136 million last year for failing to fix problems with data management and risk controls.

Sources say Citi almost missed $81 trillion in April due to input errors and a complex backup system.

A payment filter flagged four transactions totaling $280 in mid-March.

These transactions, meant for a customer’s escrow account in Brazil, were rejected due to potential restriction violations.

Although the money cleared quickly, it was still impossible to process regularly because it was stuck in the bank’s system.

Citigroup IT personnel

Citi’s tech staff instructed the individual handling the payments to manually enter the transaction into a backup screen. This screen was rarely accessed. The program had a peculiarity—the amount field was pre-filled with 15 zeros. The person entering the transaction had to remove these zeros. However, this step was never completed.

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Visit for more updates:

1. Bloomberg Report on the Citigroup Error
2. Financial Times Analysis of Banking Errors
3. SEC Regulations on Banking Transactions